What Shall We Do With The London Broncos?

Nov 22, 2013 League Freak European Super League News 2

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They have few players, hardly any staff, no ground to play at, and now the London Broncos intend to enter administration.

Welcome to Super League!

The London Broncos demise comes as no surprise to me at all. I wrote about it back in July. I knew this was coming!

That a bloke on the other side of the planet saw this coming and no administrators from the Rugby Football League stepped in and made sure this didn’t happen is a sign of how inept the RFL truly are.

Just days after the 2014 Super League draw was released that included the Broncos, the club decides to go into administration.

This effects every single club in Super League. It effects their ability to sell sponsorship packages. It effects the money that any future broadcasting deal will bring into the game. It is also a blow to the games morale.

That this could happen during the very successful World Cup is a huge blow. That is was announced just days before the World Cup semi finals, to be played in London, really says a lot about how Rugby League in the UK loves to shoot itself in the foot.

What we are likely to see is this London Broncos side allowed to fall over and then a new team will be formed who are called the London Broncos. They will have the same name, colours, logo, and many of the same people will be running the club.

If they owned you money….well, thats just bad luck. Next time, don’t invest your time or effort in Rugby League…

Of course, London are not the only club that is on its last legs. The Wakefield Wildcats have been selling players off to other clubs just to pay the bills. The Castleford Tigers aren’t in a better position than their close rivals. Hull KR is still struggling. The Bradford Bulls need to find a new owner. Basically the financial meltdown is well underway across Super League.

The few clubs that are backed by wealthy people who are willing to tip their own money in to balance the books must be horrified. The investments that these people have made are being devalued at an alarming rate.

Is it any wonder that a number of Super League clubs recently brought these issues to a head with the RFL? If you had invested money into a club and you were watching half of the league fall into a heap….wouldn’t you step up and say something to protect your investment?

All of this comes back to the Rugby Football League inability to administrate the sport.

The Rugby Football League have tipped a lot of money into the London Broncos over the years. Millions of pounds. They handed this club advantages other clubs did not receive. They even handed the London Broncos a licence to compete in Super League in a licencing system that was a great idea, but one that was poorly managed and poorly applied.

The Rugby Football League invested the sports money into this club….and now it is all gone. Who is responsible for that?

Nobody. Nobody is ever responsible for failure at the Rugby Football League.

London is the biggest media market in the UK. It is the largest corporate base in the UK. Its condensed population is a gold mine for any sport. It has numerous facilities that can be used, it has a junior league competition that is one of the healthiest in all of the UK….the reality is that there should be a number of Super League clubs playing out of London.

The Melbourne Storm were recently purchased by a group of investors from London. You know why these investors were willing to sink their money into a club on the other side of the world and not into a team like the London Broncos?

The Storm play in a stable competition, they are a stable club, they are guaranteed a certain level of income due to smart administration that has seen the NRL broadcasting deal more than double in recent years….they are a good investment.

You can not say the same thing about any Super League club.

The money is out there. People want to invest in Rugby League. It won’t happen on any serious level though until the Rugby Football League is replaced by a professional administration that is accountable for its actions.

This weekend around 70,000 people are expected to watch the Rugby League World Cup semi finals in London. The people of London will turn up if you put on a quality event for them to watch. They will not waste their time and effort though into a dying, poorly run club that is nothing but a token gesture to “the south” by a basketcase of an administration.

London needs a well run Rugby League club. Rugby League in Great Britain needs a new administration.

Its that simple.

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• Financial Trouble, London Broncos, RFL

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